1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of telephony including Internet protocol network telephony (IPNT), a subset of data network telephony (DNT), and pertains particularly to methods and apparatus for managing multiple contacts assembled as a group, forming a single contact entity within a contact center.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
In the art of telephony communications, contact centers exist to handle sales, service and technical support for businesses offering products and or services to their customers and potential customers. Communications methods typically in place in state-of-art contact centers focus on individual contacts and manage those contacts individually from the standpoint of incoming and proactive interaction campaigns.
At the time of the writing of this specification, contact center client management solutions only treat individual customers as single contacts within the center. The customers can be assigned levels (gold, silver, etc.) reflecting their importance to the business, or associated with service domains (mortgage, credit cards, etc.), but finally each customer is treated individually.
There is currently no contact center solution to treat group relationship management within a contact center. More recently, applications such as PhoneTree™ and GroupMe™ have been developed for reaching established groups of individuals, however these solutions are limited to enabling communications to individual members of the groups identified.
Therefore, what is clearly needed is a method for establishing a group of individuals as a single managed contact eligible for contact services within a contact center. A method such as this would enable more efficient sales and service using fewer contact center resources.